Use 2. To persuade the people of God to live in a more perfect and exact obedience to his will.
1. It is more perfidious for you to disobey him, that have given up yourselves by a serious covenant made with God, renouncing sin, and
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devoting yourselves to the will of God : 1 Peter i. 14, ' As obedient children, not fashioning yourselves according to the former lusts in your ignorance ; ' 1 Peter iv. 2, ' That he no longer should live the rest of his time in the flesh to the lusts of men, but to the will of God.' This covenant and promise of obedience you have often renewed at sacraments and at other times, and shall all these bonds and cords be too weak to hold you to your duty ?
2. You have received the sanctifying Spirit, and begun this work : 1 Peter i. 22, ' Seeing ye have purified your hearts to tlie obedience of the truth.' He is become a principle of life to you, and therefore it is more unnatural for you to sin : 1 John iii. 9, ' Whosoever is born of God doth not commit sin, for his seed remaineth in him, and he cannot sin, because he is born of God.' Others offer violence to their duty, but you to your nature.
3. You make a profession of being in relation to Christ as your Lord, and therefore you should live in a strict obedience to his holy will : Luke vi. 46, ' Why call ye me Lord, Lord, and do not the things which I say ? '
4. You know what the will of God is more than others, and therefore, if you disobey it, you will be beaten with many stripes : Luke xii, 47, 48, ' And that servant which knew his Lord's will, and prepared not himself, neither did according to his will, shall be beaten with many stripes ; but he that did not know, shall be beaten with few stripes.'
5. You have found him a saviour ; and therefore you should not stick to obey him as a lord. You have tasted of his mercy, and hov/ gracious he is, 1 Peter ii. 3, not only in your first conversion, when he called you and passed by others, but in his daily rewarding bounty, having found the comforts and benefits that attend a course of obedi- ence : Ps. cxix. 165, ' Great peace have they that love thy law,' There- fore you should be more eminent in serving the Lord. Upon all these considerations you should more watch against sin, and be more exact in the service of Christ.
We have seen the pattern ; Christ the pattern of the husband's pre- eminence, the church the pattern of the wife's subjection. Now it is easy to accommodate these things.
First, The husband is the head of the wife.
1. As the head is more eminent than the rest of the members of the body, so there is an eminency and superiority in the husband because of his sex : 1 Cor. xi. 3, * The head of the woman is the man, and the head of the man is Christ, and the head of Christ is God.' Man is superior in dignity and authority, as the head is above the body.
2. As the head hath power over the body to rule it and direct it, so it noteth his authority and power of government.
3. As the head is the seat of the senses and understanding, so the husband should be furnished with some complete measure of knowledge and prudence : 1 Peter iii. 7, 'Likewise ye husbands dwell with them according to knowledge,' as a man of knowledge, that they may not only be able to know their own duty, but instruct their wives : * Let them ask their husbands at home,' 1 Cor. xiv. 35 ; and he is called * the guide of her youth.'
4. The husband hath such a power over the wife as the head hath
VeR. 24.] SERMONS UPON EPHESIANS V. 4G7
over the members. We must not forget the near connection that is between head and members ; that the wife is his own flesh ; tlie authority is so mutual, that the wrong that is done to her is done to himself.
Use 3. Direction to husbands.
1. They ought to resemble Christ, whose image they bear —
[1.] In other things as well as in point of superiority ; holiness, self-denial, love, and all sorts of duty. Look, as it aggravateth the faults of magistrates, dixi, dii estis, ' I have said ye are gods,' Ps. Ixxxvi. 2. God hath put the image of his superiority upon them ; but if those be not the image of his wisdom, purity, and holiness, they join together the image of God and a beast, a drunken god and a wanton god. So the husband is head of the wife; but if the husband be ignorant, furious, frothy, incontinent, intemperate, little of Christ will be seen in him.
[2.] In using and employing their dignity and power suitable to the ends of their relation. Christ, that is the head of the church, is also the saviour of the body. In some sense he treateth his mystical body •with more kindness than the natural : Kom. xiv. 3, * He pleased not himself ; ' Heb. x. 5, 6, 'Wherefore when he cometh into the world, he saith. Sacrifices and offerings thou wouldst not ; but a body thou hast prepared me : in burnt-oiFerings and sacrifices for sin thou hast had no pleasure.' Therefore he gave his own natural body as a sacrifice : ver. 10, 'We are sanctified through the body of Christ once offered for all*